by Harold Chapin
Directed by Kate Wasserberg
Designed by Dinah England
Costume Design by Chrissy Stergios
Produced by Isabella Thomas
Presented by Golden Oryx Productions in association with Concordance
The Cast
Betty Jones - Maxine Scholfield
Lesceline - Rachel Payant
Alice - Margot Molinari
Colonel Ivor Jones - Alex Barclay
E Wallace Wister - Chris Courtenay
Wooton - Richard Costello
Geoffrey Belasis KC - David Kershaw
Sundays and Mondays, 26 and 27 June; 4, 10 and 11 July 2005
THE FIRST REVIVAL FOR EIGHTY SEVEN YEARS OF THE COMEDY BY HAROLD CHAPIN COMMEMORATING THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH
Set on a houseboat on the Thames on the eve of the Great War, The New Morality is a sparkling social comedy by one of the greatest lost talents of the First World War.
Colonel Jones has been paying a little too much attention to Muriel, one half of the couple who live on the next houseboat to theirs. The Colonel’s wife, Betty, driven to distraction by his disloyalty, disastrously breaches the boundaries of female etiquette when she directly confronts Muriel about the relationship, and the delicate social fabric holding the riverboat community together begins to fall apart... A satirical yet profound look at the battle between the sexes and the position of women before the Great War. Originally produced in the West End and Broadway in 1921.
Playwright Harold Chapin was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1886. Although “technically an American citizen, he was an English actor, and English playwright and died as a British soldier”. A true man of the theatre, he worked as an actor (appearing extensively in the West End and in the original productions of What Every Woman Knows and Strife), director and stage manager, and was closely associated with Harley Granville Barker. Regarded as one of the greatest potential dramatic talents to be lost in the Great War, his work has often been compared with that of Edwardian playwright St John Hankin whose works have enjoyed such success at the Orange Tree Theatre. Enlisting in September 1914, he was killed in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915, leaving a wife and five year old son. He was 29.
The cast includes many Finborough stalwarts including Alex Barclay (Loveplay), Richard Costello (How I Got That Story), Chris Courtenay (Lullabies of Broadmoor), David Kershaw (The Alchemist, Mapbeth – Son of the Grave) and Margot Molinari (the title role in Young Emma).
Director Kate Wasserberg is Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre and was Assistant Director on the Finborough’s recent sell-out productions of the UK Premiere of Frank McGuinness’ Gates of Gold with William Gaunt and John Bennett and Tom Murphy’s The Gigli Concert with Niall Buggy, Catherine Cusack and Paul McGann. Her own productions include Blue Velvet, adapted from David Lynch's film (Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh), Doing Lines Festival (The Pleasance)and Molnar Shorts (Finborough Theatre).
Produced in association with Concordance who have won much acclaim for their rediscoveries of neglected Victorian and Edwardian classics at the Finborough Theatre including Masks and Faces and The Women’s War – A Centenary Celebration.
The Press on Harold Chapin
“With the single exception of Rupert Brooke, no English-speaking man of more unquestionable genius has been lost to the world in this world-frenzy...But what one realizes most keenly in retrospect is the abounding vitality of Chapin's talent…It filled one with a sort of dumb rage to think that such rare promise had been extinguished, on the threshold of fulfilment, by the brute hazard of the battlefield. It was a youth in his twenties who had done all this fine work---what might we not have expected from the ripened man?” William Archer, New York Nation 1916
THE NEW MORALITY